My name’s Garrett McGuin and I’m an active volunteer for the Centreville Immigration Forum. I was born and raised in the Northern Virginia area and I’m just getting ready to completely finish my bachelor’s degree in Organizational Administration at George Mason University. Through my time at Mason I’ve developed a closer relationship with a professor named Al Fuertes who has been actively involved in CIF activities as well. Al was the facilitator for some of the early CIF town meetings, delivers sermons at the Wellspring UCC church, and teaches conflict resolution, trauma and healing classes, as well as refugee classes at Mason. I had the opportunity to attend some of the ESL sessions that are taught on Sundays at the Centreville Regional Library through a Refugee course that I took from Al. I got to meet a new group of people that I normally would never have the opportunity to get to know before I took the Refugee class.

Throughout two semesters at Mason I was able to attend some of these sessions and get to know immigrants from different parts of the world on a more personal level. All of them had a story to tell and I learned so much from my interactions. Most of the people I was helping with English speaking skills were day laborers who typically stand on the local street corners each and every day looking for work. Most of them say they want to be able to send back money to their families and offer them the support they need through tough times. Many of the day laborers that I got to meet dream of being able to go back home at some point too, however, their families need them to be able to send back money because their is not the same kind of opportunities for work as they can get here. However, sometimes they may go for weeks without work and have to sacrifice a normal life for themselves in order to provide for their families.

My experience with the CIF thus far has been enlightening for me. I’ve had the opportunity to help with the ESL sessions, research day laborer employment, and sit in with the Communications Committee to talk about the message and goals of the CIF. I also built the current webpage that can be found at “centrevilleimmigrationforum.org” and I am helping as much as I can with the newest website currently under construction. So far all of the people whom I have had the privilege of meeting, whether it be CIF volunteers or the people the CIF has been helping, have inspired me to see things from a light I’ve never examined before. Many people view day laborers as “eye soars” or people who are taking money and jobs out of our economy. However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it would be that personal connection and the sharing of our experiences are what truly shed light on right and wrong. Biases and prejudice are widespread, it seems to be the world we live in. Yet if we take the time to sit down and have a conversation with someone, we will quickly learn that we have so much more in common than we think. We are all human and we all have our own goals and visions, and meanings to our life. I believe that it is finding the commonality between people that makes our world a better place. I view the Centreville Labor Resource Center as an opportunity for a community to unite and work together at creating a community where everyone is treated fairly and where everyone can find support within each other.

This week Grace and I got a chance to meet all of the workers who have been involved with establishing the center since the beginning. On Monday we had a meeting with all of them to talk about how we can get other workers who haven’t been involved to get involved. In the meeting we decided it would be beneficial if on whatever day one of them was available, they could come out with us to talk to workers on the street. On the street, Grace and I have often discussed the fact that all of the rules of the worker’s center are decided by the workers, therefore making it beneficial for them to be involved. However, it is easy for us to say that, but since none of the workers who were talking about the center in their communities were with us, it seemed kind of disjointed. There are of course many obstacles to the workers coming with us on the street, since obviously they have to work too!

Luckily,on one of the days we went to the street, Alejandro contacted us and said he was available to help. On Friday Grace, Alejandro, Connie (another long-term volunteer), and I all went out to invite workers to an upcoming meeting about the center. I brought with me some of the fliers we had made. These fliers were in Spanish, English, and Korean, in order to reach as many employers in the community as possible. We showed them to the workers so they could imagine how the center would help to create more opportunities for work. Any home owner who needed help around the house, but who was afraid of getting a traffic violation, of not knowing which workers they could communicate with, or how the whole day laborer system worked would feel more comfortable coming to the center. The way they would hear about the center of course would be through the fliers. After talking a little bit about how the center would work with the fliers as an example, we invited all of the workers we talked to to come to the meeting.

Check out this new report, from the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, which provides more evidence that immigrants have a positive effect on our economy, especially in the DC metro area. Highly skilled immigrants outnumber lower skilled immigrants nationally, as well as in the metro area.

Hello again! This week has been very busy for Stephanie and me. Neither of us have had the chance to really sit down and write a post until today.

This week we have been surveying the area where most of the men wait for employers to pick them up in order to approximate the average number of workers and employers who may utilize the Center when it opens. On any given day there are about 65 workers seeking chambitas (odd jobs) and 25 employers who hire them. By keeping track of these numbers we hope to equip the Center with adequate resources and volunteer/staff management. While we are on the street we talk to the workers and encourage them to attend meetings to decide how the Center will be run. This set-up process requires that the men partake in democratic decision making, which we hope empowers them with the necessary confidence to stipulate fair treatment from their employers (including fair wages and safe working conditions.) The Center will also be equipped with bilingual volunteers and/or staff who can help match skill sets with employers to help ensure quality work for the community.

A question someone recently asked me was, “Since the Center doesn’t yet exist, how is your work changing society? What are the tangible results?” It’s a very good question. At this point, everything we’re doing has to do with sustainability. Without the community empowerment and organizing work we’re doing right now, the Center would not be BY the workers or FOR the workers. Our role in talking to them on the streets every day is to give them the confidence and support they need to make important decisions about how the Center will be operated. I think building trust between people is just as important as tangibles like “building a resource center” or “helping X number of workers get employed”. For those of us motivated to do social justice work, sometimes it’s easy to overlook the importance of — or hard to truly accept — the critical importance of baby steps. I have come to embrace “midwife” as the most adequate term to describe what Stephanie and I are doing here this summer, helping to bring the Centreville Labor Resource Center to life. And an essential quality of a good midwife is communication. We are currently acting as “connectors”, moving slowly and laying the proper ground work for the parturition.

Aside from surveying the street we’ve also been doing hardcore office work! We’ve drawn up some sample advertising flyers which have been translated from English to Spanish and Korean. Because a large segment of the Centreville population is ethnically Korean, we do not want to limit employment opportunities for the workers by only advertising the Center in English. In addition to creating advertisements and similar materials, we’ve also been drafting important forms and documents for the Center. These require a lot of careful thought and effort. We want to make clear that the Center will simply be a safe place for employers and workers to meet, not a hiring agency. The Center is a non-governmental organization (NGO) that abides by all US laws.

Today we had a great church service at Wellspring. Each week is something new and different! A wonderfully talented guest musician came and performed for us. The music itself was a really moving experience — very soulful and uplifting. I was really moved by the sermon, too. The people at Wellspring identify themselves in various ways — old, young, black, white, Asian, Latino, Hispanic, indigenous, gay, straight, sexy, strong, extroverted, introverted, Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, agnostic, atheist, etc. etc. etc. — but at the heart of it all we share a human spirit, and we come to church because it uplifts that spirit; while we may have differing personal identities day-to-day we come to church and celebrate life with a collective identity as human beings. Wellspring is the most open, welcoming, and humanly affirming place I have ever known. I feel so lucky to be here this summer. Now I look forward to church on Sundays — something I’ve never really looked forward to before in my life!

I will try to provide a more timely update this upcoming week. It’ll be meetings, meetings, meetings for the next few days.

I’d like to introduce myself, my name is Stephanie Gans and I am Grace’s fellow volunteer for Wellspring UCC and the Centreville Immigration Forum. I grew up in central New Jersey, but I have lived in Virginia for the past 3 1/2 years as a student at the College of William and Mary. I graduated from W&M this year with a degree in sociology. During my time at W&M I became fluent in Spanish by taking Hispanic Studies courses, interning with Student Action with Farm workers (SAF), and studying abroad in Argentina. I could not be more excited to be here in Centreville to support the immigrant and day laborer community, as well as the efforts of Wellspring UCC! After my summer here, I will be moving to Carrboro, North Carolina to take my place in a similar faith-based volunteer program, the Johnson Internship Program.

This week Grace and I got the chance to visit the Wheaton Welcome Center in Maryland. The Wheaton center is a place where day laborers can find work in an equitable and safe environment. They also provide ESOL classes, legal aid, and financial education workshops for their members. We got to the center right before they started their lottery. The workers would write their names on the sign-in sheet in the order that they came into the center. This would be the order in which they received their lottery number. The staff of the center took out a manual bingo ball machine and put in the necessary numbered bingo balls. First they did the lottery for the skilled workers. Since only 5 skilled workers came to the center that day, there were only 5 tiny bingo balls inside the spherical cage. A staff member called up each worker by name, in the order s/he had signed into the center. Each one cranked the machine’s handle until a ball fell out, and whatever number was on that ball, was the number they were placed on the list. Meanwhile, another staff member checked each worker’s membership card. The process was repeated for all of the regular workers, except there were 22 of them so it took a little longer.

After the lottery process we got another chance to ask the staff of the center questions, and to see how workers got hired. Some of the employers who came in seemed to barrel into the office, feeling empowered to grab whichever workers they wanted. Jacinta, one of the staff members we spoke to, would make sure to stop them and have them follow the procedure for hiring workers. Other employers would come in and wait patiently for Jacinta to help them hire someone. If the employer already knew who they wanted they would ask for that person by name. Jacinta told us how important it was for the staff to know how valuable different skills and jobs were, and what a decent wage was for each type of work. This knowledge enabled her to negotiate pay equitably with employers.

Fernando, another staff member of CASA de Maryland spoke to us about how important it was for each worker to take equal responsibility in helping the center run. Each month there was an obligatory meeting for the workers, in which they would discuss how the center was running and what they could do to make it better. They also needed volunteers to do things like leave advertisements for their work on doorknobs.

My name is Grace and I am a UCC/Alliance of Baptists Summer Communities of Service volunteer for the Wellspring United Church of Christ in Centreville, Virginia. Commitment to service and social justice shape and define my life. I am an Honors student at Montgomery County Community College in Pennsylvania studying Geography. After graduation I intend to pursue a career in community development. In the past I have volunteered with Back Bay Mission in Biloxi, Mississippi, Habitat for Humanity, served as a student liaison and advocate as Student Government President, Co-Chaired my college’s first annual Relay for Life, and taught children in two schools for disadvantaged children in Haryana, India. All my friends share a commitment to service; with our small, dedicated team we set out to accomplish what we can.

I have left my family in Pennsylvania to work as a “midwife” for ten weeks, birthing the Centreville Labor Resource Center in order to meet a much-needed demand for an equitable system of labor distribution among day laborers as well as neighborhood peace. I’ve come to Centreville with an eagerness to learn and to help.

Stephanie and I will update this blog regularly throughout the summer as the project progresses. The Centreville Immigration Forum is a place where many differing viewpoints intersect in expression. We hope this blog will be a voice of optimism, courage, hope and positivity.

It’s Tuesday afternoon and already my summer (I suppose it’s technically still spring, even though it’s really hot and doesn’t feel like spring AT ALL) is ten percent over. Since Sunday morning Stephanie and I have worked 21 hours and been in and out of Washington DC twice. We’ve definitely been busy!

On Sunday Stephanie and I went to the library and helped teach English to some of the workers. Steph worked with the less advanced English speakers and I worked with the more advanced. (Stephanie speaks fluent Spanish; I have a long way to go.) There were two students in my group. They were both better at spoken English than written, but they are both shy about their English and speak softly. At the end of the lesson both thanked me profusely for helping them. I was kind of surprised because I wasn’t sure how effective the lesson had been, particularly considering that my Spanish isn’t fluent and I had difficulty answering some of their questions. Perhaps they do not feel entitled to assistance or attention in this country and are really grateful for the help they do receive.

On Monday, Stephanie, Alice (CIF President) and I went to the shopping center where many day laborers congregate and wait for someone to drive by and offer them a job. During the time we were there I counted approximately 40 workers on the street; my estimate is that there are really at least 50 “on the corner” every day. One of the goals of the Centreville Labor Resource Center is to get the men off the streets and provide them with a more equitable system for gaining employment — in many cases, employers simply drive up to the curb and the first man to touch the vehicle gets the job. This probably scares off many potential employers who might hire a laborer for odd domestic or landscaping jobs — having ten or twenty men rush at your car, trying to open the doors and get in (all while speaking in a foreign language) can be intimidating. For other workers who have prearrangements with employers, the CLRC will keep them out of the blazing heat (and frigid cold, come winter.) We asked all the workers what they thought of the idea of a day laborers’ center. About half seemed skeptical as to whether our plan would or even could come to fruition; the other half were open and supportive.

Today we went out on the street again with O., or “doña” as the workers call her. She encourages the workers to improve their English skills so they can get better jobs. In her big black bag she carries a variety of ESL materials she tailored specifically for the workers’ interests and needs. We ended up speaking with a worker from Guatemala for more than an hour. He talked about life in his home country and life in the United States. He has lived here for about four years and does not know when or if he can go home. He said he misses the shared spaces in his home country, such as plazas, parks, and markets. He told us there is a song in Guatemala about a “cage of gold” which sort of sums up the distribution of space between people in America. Americans have a lot of individual space but not many places designed specifically for people to commune and meet informally together. As a geography student, I thought it was an interesting observation.

Last night Stephanie and I went to the Universalist National Memorial Church in Washington DC for their Interfaith Pride Week Service. It was “fabulous”, to use a buzzword from the evening! I rarely go to church services back home because I don’t have the patience to sit through a sermon on Sunday morning. The IPWS was perfect because it never stopped moving — just as the LGBTQIA movement never stops pushing forward. Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Wiccans, and other religions came together to celebrate and affirm the place of the LGBTQIA community in all faith traditions. The ceremony captivated every sense — the Catholics burned incense, live music was played throughout the entire evening, and everyone sang, chanted, shook each others’ hands, and offered words of support. It was pretty much the penultimate worship experience. I was glad to have had the opportunity to go.

Well, I think that covers everything for now. We are also doing a lot of office and paperwork but the fruits of our labor are yet to ripen. I am pleased with how smoothly everything has run so far and hope it continues to for the remainder of the summer.